The Dog & Gun

A super little event hosted by Pete Lawrence at his place in Braunston, Warwickshire. He’s a most genial host, putting breakfast together on the Sunday morning for attendees and basically opening his house up for the handful of people that come along.

This year, he invited me to perform in his new barn conversion, a pretty big space with a lovely open fire and a decent sound system to boot.

Earlier in the day, Tom Green’s new collective ‘Newanderthal’ had played outside on the lawn; in actual fact I think it might have been their inaugaral gig. Ansuman Biswas [freshly freed after his self-imposed incarceration as the ‘Manchester Hermit’] joined him on percussion – it was a really peaceful performance – shame that there was a lot of wind – it was a gusty day…

Pete played the assembled audience of about twenty people his new DVD – a selection of choice tracks with accompanying imagery… it went down really well. After that I sat down at my keyboards and proceeded to play one of the nicest and most enjoyable gigs of my career to date. OK, I was a little nervous to start with, playing in front of such a small audience in close proximity, but as the time went on, I found myself settling into it really well, and even attempted completely new improvisations there too.

I spent the night in the campervan outside, before leaving earlyish on the Sunday; a shame really, as Emily Davis played a lovely acoustic set by all accounts.